Table of Contents
This book is lovingly dedicated to [YOUR NAME], goodly nerd. You know, [YOUR NAME], every day you get out of bed to [THING YOU DO AT WORK OR HOME OR HOME OFFICE] in [YOUR CITY] despite hating it with every fiber of your being. Now that I have your money, I would very much hope that you achieve as much success in your life as [PLEASING SIMILE THAT IS SIGNIFICANT TO YOU IN SOME WAY]. All my heartfelt best to you, [SHORTENED VERSION OF YOUR FIRST NAME]!
INTRODUCTION
Nerds. Once a tortured subrace of humans condemned to hiding in dark corners from the brutal hand of social torment... now, captains of industry!
The explosive popularity of the Internet, video games, and smartphone technology has made this formerly feeble cluster of pasty virgins cool. The same jocks/bullies who pushed us around in school now carry around cell phones, have desktops, laptops, a DVR, DSLR cameras, and Xboxes (Xbocies?); they know what 3G is. The war is over. The Nerds have won. This was no accident. The Nerd uprising can be attributed to an unnatural ability to obsess and focus when others would be content with letting it go.
If you are a part of now-glamorous Nerd Herd subculture but still feel like youre waiting to claim your gold cup at the top of the social food chain, then I am here to help you. I shall attempt, through the primitive form of communication known as writing, to help you milk your Nerdy attributes into a delicious and useful pulp. By the end, you will hopefully know more about who you are, why you should be comfortable with that, and how to leverage those attributes into getting the things you want (you will hopefully also figure out what exactly that is). Oh, and achieving happiness. Thats kind of a big one, too.
You dont have to be a stereotypical geekwad to give yourself over to the philosophical tenets of Nerdism, the ideology for us obsessive types. All one needs is a willingness to hone his or her innate ability for overanalysis and hyper-self-awarenessA QUALITY NERDS ALREADY POSSESSand use it for GOOD. Playing Call of Duty for twenty-three hours straight is cool and all, but Im going to teach you, my fellow Nerds, how to also spend time on things in your life that will get you the following two things: PAID and LAID. (That rhymes, Marge, and YOU KNOW it rhymes.) Or at least better equipped to get out of your own way and be productive with the likely result of the paying and laying thing (which sounded incredibly douchey when I read it back aloud).
SCHWAAA???
There are Nerds, and then there are Nerdists. A Nerdist is, more specifically, an artful Nerd. He or she doesnt just consume, he or she creates and innovates. (Unintentional rhyme this time. On purpose that time.) Freelancers, game designers, graphic designers, DMs (Dungeon Masters), musicians, artists, crafties, and writers are all examples of Nerdists. Yes, we obsess over things, but we are also driven to produce stuff. It may not be surprising, then, to hear (with your eyes, since youre reading this) that I refer to Nerdists as creative obsessives. The technology explosion in the Information Age has allowed us to flourish, whereas even as recently as fifteen years ago we would have had to get jobs that devoured our souls and pooped them out into little cubes, with little recourse for pursuing our Nerdly passions in any professional capacity. OUR TIME IS NOW. Its actually cool to be smartREWARDED even! It is a Golden Age for Nerds. It is our time to THRIVE. You can be a thriver (even though that word itself creeps me out for some reason)!
As the founder of Nerdism (your new object of worship), I have long been fascinated by productivity and what motivates people to achieve greatness. The Internet is the great equalizer. We all have access to the same data at all times, so there are fewer excuses. How do some people break through while others remain miserable and inert? I ask this question a lot. I have spent even more time trying to ascertain the answer(s).
Well, who the fuck do you think you are, Chris Hardwick, comedian, former dating show host, current cable host, and pod-caster? Why should I listen to even one crappy word you say? First off, youre very aggressive. Second, good questions. I have been a lifelong Nerd. As a youth, I was a Nerd in the unironic era of the 1980s when it wasnt a cool buzzword yet. Talk of chess club and D&D could get you stuffed in a trash can. Let me rephrase that: One day after chess club, I got stuffed in a trash can. It is this type of experience that motivates the Nerd to utter under his breath while picking pork rinds and banana peels off his short-sleeve button-down, Ill show you bastards... SOMEDAY ILL SHOW YOU ALL. [crying starts] But, unfortunately, something happens as we relinquish our life reins and get caught up in unhealthy patterns that keep us from showing them all.
When I was twenty-two, I started working for MTV through a fluke audition. It was a weird accident, but it launched a better career for me right out of college than I would have had otherwise. At least, it seemed like it was a good thing. Had I been mentally prepared to handle the responsibility it would have been good. The erroneous lesson that I learned was Work just falls in your lap. Again, if youre prepared for it, thats good. I was not.
What followed were several years of laziness, drinking, and fuckups on my part. This woo-hoo/par-tay attitude piloted my brain through my twenties. Then, when I hit thirty, I began to look around at my life: I was consuming a baby elephants weight in alcohol EVERY DAY. I lived in a shitty apartment near UCLA (where I went to schoolapparently I had become the dude who wouldnt leave and bummed out the college partygo-ers), my place was always a mess, I had ruined my credit, and I had no real work prospects. I had become a thing I had always fearedthe fat, drunk guy who used to be on television. Back when I was working on MTV (which, oddly, at one time, aired short films set to popular music), there was sort of a curse that dictated that one might not hit it any bigger, after his or her time there, as it were. I always recoiled at the thought of this curse, and here I was taking active steps every fucking day to make it happen.
Long story not much shorter, I somehow had the good sense to take stock and ask myself what was important. I knew that I had two choices: I could continue living the way I was living or make broad, sweeping changes. I knew the latter at least gave me a prayer of salvaging my life. In the former, I die in an overweight booze-tomb. It occurred to me that I had sent all of the Nerd qualities that defined me as a youth to the attic, like so many old comic books and outdated game consoles. However, I distinctly remembered that I had pretty intense focusing capabilities. Programming computers (in BASIC, no less), winning chess tournaments, playing video games, collecting action figures, playing D&D, ruining bell curves in Latin class... there was something there that I could use in the present day. Deep down I was still the outcast kid who had decided to abandon all of his passions in exchange for simply trying to fit in by partying all the time. But that had to end. I was pissed at the volume of time I had been wasting, and being pissed created the necessary friction to light a fire.
